A Tale of Two Cities

Our trip to Pennsylvania concluded with an overnight stay in Harrisburg for a family picnic on Saturday. My parents begged and pleaded with us to come over on Friday night so that they could wake up with Sammy on Saturday morning. This was a-ok with us because that meant he got to sleep in their room and we got to sleep in. Something we've only been able to do simultaneously a handful of times since Sam was born.

Because we were submitting to their grandparental whims, they insisted on paying for our hotel room. Now I love a bargain as much as the next guy, but my family tends to take things to the extreme when it comes to finding a deal. The whole lot of them decided to stay in a Days Inn on the banks of the Susquehanna. Sounds charming, right? Oh, but it was so the opposite of charming. First off, it's mayfly hatching season. Fortunately it's only the very beginning of the season, because all of the rooms had doors to the outside. There was, by far, enough room between the floor and the door for a whole army of mayflies to march into our ground floor room. Also, the carpet in our room was so dirty that if you walked barefoot across the rug and then went into the tiled bathroom, you left footprints on the floor. Nice.

Luckily we only had to spend a few hours in that awful place, and most of them were spent sleeping. Saturday morning we checked out and had lovely breakfast at Eat 'N Park, where Sam shared a Smiley Cookie with his grandma. The Smiley Cookies were fish-shaped because the mayfly hatching ushers in fly fishing season.

We spent all day at my Uncle Rob's enjoying fun and family and some serious pig.

We hit the road at 4pm, and being an ambitious fellow, SOB planned to drive straight through to Atlanta without stopping overnight. With a 16-month old and a wife with a giant uterus resting on her bladder. His plan allowed for two bathroom/food stops and an estimated arrival time between 2 and 3am.

I'll wait for you to stop laughing.

We stopped twice before it even got dark. Sam briefly fell asleep around 7:30, but once night fell the bright headlights coming through the car kept him awake and screaming. Finally at 10 o'clock I begged for mercy. We stumbled upon an exit with a wealth of reputable hotels, a big shock to us since we were in Hillsville, Virginia. We turned into the first decent one we could find, which ended up being a Holiday Inn Express. They only had smoking rooms left, but they did have a king bed, so we settled. It wasn't until after we handed over our credit card that they informed us that the elevator was busted. And that our room was on the fourth floor. We had a pack-n-play, two suitcases and a toddler to carry up three flights of stairs. SOB, in his perpetual optimism, had just downed a 32 ounce coffee, so he decided to get us settled and go find some grub and maybe a beer. Sam and I passed out and didn't even hear him come back an hour later.

The overnight stop did us a ton of good in the long run. We were back up and on the road by 8 the next morning. Sam dozed off a little after 10, and slept the final three hours of the trip. We rolled into the ATL at 1 in the afternoon and pretty much collapsed. Except for Sam. He had a field day running around the house checking to make sure all of his toys were still there and in proper working order. Everyone got a good night's sleep and now we're just trying to get back into the groove.

Considering that my google reader still says 100+ unread posts, that may take a while!